The reconstructed scenes clearly demonstrate the scientist's ability to decode the language of the cat's visual system.

The researchers attached electrodes to 177 cells in an anesthetized cat's thalamus, a region of the brain falling about half-way in the visual processing pathway.

Having recorded patterns of firing as various scenes were flashed before the cat's eyes, the team was able to reconstruct very closely what the animal saw, which varied from people's faces to scenes of a dark forest.

The research was applauded by other neuroscientists.

"The demonstration that you can reconstruct a movie from the multiple cells in the thalamus is an important step in our understanding of how signals are represented in the activity of populations of cells," said Fred Rieke, an assistant professor of physiology and biophysics at the University of Washington.

Stanley, now an assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Harvard, said the research provides clues about how prosthetics may one day be wired into the mammalian nervous system. By understanding the language of the brain, scientists will be able to create devices that talk to it, he said.

"Trying to understand how the brain codes information leads to the possibility of replacing parts of the nervous system with an artificial device," he said.

Stanley predicted that in the next couple of decades, as more and more of the neural code is decoded, brain interfaces may start to appear.

But he cautioned it may take a lot longer. He noted that the team also recorded the activity of cells higher up in the cat's visual pathway -- in the visual cortex -- but the results were not as startling because of the greater complexity of the cells.

"So little is understood about thoughts, perceptions, dreams, it's impossible to predict how much progress we'll make in understanding them," he said.